good thursday morning. i'm lindsey reiser live at msnbc world headquarters in new york. we got our eyes on capitol hill this morning, just over an hour, house republicans are set to vote on a resolution that would oust minnesota democrat ilhan omar from the influential foreign affairs committee. it is a move that is sparking outrage from democrats. but underscores the looming paralysis and fireworks likely ahead for this 118th congress. with our capitol hill team noting it is getting off to a

slow start, putting it bluntly, quote, welcome to the seinfeld congress. it is a show about nothing. the vote on congresswoman omar is one of the political squabbles unfolding while the nation ticks a day closer to defaulting on its debts. house speaker kevin mccarthy met with president biden yesterday, but there doesn't appear to have been any progress on the debt limit. the president did strike this optimistic tone while speaking this morning. >> start treating each other with respect. that's what kevin and i are going to do. not a joke. but a good meeting yesterday. >> we'll get latest ahead. also this morning, day four of that deadly ice storm across the south. cars are spinning out of control on highways. thousands of flights delayed and canceled. and in texas, nearly half a million people are facing the bone chilling cold without power. >> it is scary. definitely scary. i can say that. it is very slippery out here.

>> probably one of the worst. >> we'll get an update from one of the areas hardest hit. and watering down history. the college board facing criticism for caving to political pressure from florida governor ron desantis and revising its ap african american studies course. so what are students no longer going to learn and what could this mean for students in other states? going to ask those questions to two leading academics in african american studies later this hour. we are going to begin with the political fight on capitol hill. starting us off, msnbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali. and also joined by former congressman joe crawley, democrat from new york, and former chair of the house democratic caucus, and former congressman carlos curbelo, republican from florida and msnbc political analyst. so, ali, first to you here, this vote to remove omar is set for 12:15. will mccarthy have the votes and what else is on the agenda for the week? >> reporter: well, look, this is what the -- my colleagues here on the panel know well, really a legislative friday, even though we're at thursday because after they do these two votes today in

the house, they are then out of town for the rest of the weekend. but now at this point it looks like mccarthy is going to have the vote he needs to push congressman omar off the foreign affairs committee. it is a decision that he defended again yesterday, saying that this is because of past comments that she has made, and saying that this is not a political tit for tat, a response to democrats kicking off several republican members from their committees last congress. instead, this is him saying that she cannot serve on this one specific committee, and, look, it comes against the backdrop of mccarthy taking actions against two other democratic members, swalwell and schiff, kicking them off the intelligence committee last week. a different process this time because this is a standing committee, not a select committee. it means it is going to go to the full house floor. mccarthy had to negotiate with a few members of his conference leaning on them and making a few changes to the way that omar could potentially appeal this decision in order to get certain members of the conference on board. it is a reminder of the thin

margins that mccarthy is working with, especially as one republican member is out recovering from an accident. he could only afford to lose three votes here. right now it looks like he's going to have them. there is either one or two no votes left. we know that congressman nancy mace is likely still a no on this. and we're going to be watching to see if congressman matt gaetz is also a no. he could go either way at this point. that's someone we're watching. we don't expect it to up end the process, though. >> congressman curbelo this vote on congresswoman omar, it is another political fight that doesn't address the serious issues this congress is facing. are politicians picking the right battles right now? >> well, lindsey, yeah, republicans do take the risk of seeming petty. and certainly this is a tit for tat, and i agree that it is not exactly the same. speaker mccarthy is not booting any democrats from all of their committees as democrats did last congress. but this is entirely predictable and democrats took this

unprecedented step last congress, a lot of people predicted that if republicans took over, we would see similar actions. and that's probably what we're going to see today. but, it certainly is incumbent upon mccarthy, being that the house is the only part of the government republicans control now to show the american people, especially those swing voters that decide pretty much every election what republicans are doing to address the big issues in the country. i do think that the meeting with president biden was a good step, both for him and president biden, and they'll both be able to share with the public that they're doing their best to try to bring down the temperature and actually address the issues that matter. >> congressman curbelo, let's look at the other issues that are bubbling up in the gop caucus. a push from congressman andy biggs to impeach alejandro mayorkas, quashing a democrat ban on guns in the natural resources committee room, and then a spat over whether election deniers should lead the pledge of allegiance before

judiciary committee meetings. what does it say about both parties' goals for the next two years and their prospects for getting anything done? >> yeah, lindsey, this is a nightmare for republican leadership over the last decade. we have seen and former congressman crawley and i saw how republicans gave their leaders, their speakers headaches. and this is just a long list of headaches that kevin mccarthy is going to have to deal with this congress. these are big distractions for the republican leadership team. they end up making news. deflecting attention from any messaging that the leadership has settled on. so, this is kind of just a continuation of what we saw that first week where republicans were disorganized, where they weren't ready to elect a speaker, and now you see all these little issues bubbling up

that can become major distractions. so this will be a constant challenge for kevin mccarthy, steve scalise and the ready of the house gop leadership team. >> let's dive into the bullet points here. yesterday in the house judiciary committee, a nearly hour long debate broke out over reciting the pledge of allegiance before meetings. we had a pretty fiery exchange in the house natural resources committee after republicans shut down a democratic push to ban members from carrying guns in their hearing room. republican tom mcclintock asked, who do you not trust to bring a firearm into a committee room? representative alexandra ocasio-cortez said i believe from what i missed, the competence of some members may be something i'm willing to question. if things like this are going on after just one month, how are next two years going to go?

>> well, lindsey, let me first say, whatever elected official politician says, it is not tit for tat. you can rest assure it is tit for tat when it comes to what is happening right now with congresswoman omar. she certainly was dealt with four years ago, she apologized for the statement she made, and this is really the apples and oranges when it comes to the statements that congresswoman green and gosar made in terms of fiscal harm to their colleagues, including alexandra ocasio-cortez. when it comes to the issue of pledge of allegiance, i remind everyone, the house of representatives every day it is in session recites the pledge of allegiance. this was an attempt by republicans to further brandish their patriotism so to speak by requiring it at the beginning of every judicial committee hearing. of the judiciary committee. there was an opportunity for democrats to remind many voters and americans that some of the

members of the judiciary committee have apologized for or have condoned the events of january 6th, 2021. and, you know, by suggesting that they not be able to recite the pledge because they failed to uphold the constitution during that time period. so, it is going to be this back and forth politically. i think a lot of this comes from a tendency, i think carlos would agree, of republicans to kind of wrap themselves or try to wrap themselves around the flag. in the end, it is more of an embarrassment to them. >> congressman crawley, on the debt ceiling, we heard president biden say he and speaker mccarthy had a good meeting yesterday at the white house. they still don't have a deal. how sustainable is the president's strategy to not negotiate on this issue? >> well, i think the president's willing to negotiate and talk to speaker mccarthy. i think the onus because it is the republicans who i remind you

and the audience voted several times during the trump administration to raise the debt ceiling. it always seems to happen when they're -- when the president is a democrat, that they don't want to raise the debt ceiling. these are obligations owed by the united states. and i think it is incumbent upon the speaker and the republicans if they don't want to raise the debt ceiling without cuts to suggest what those cuts would be. i know that speaker mccarthy has taken social security, medicare off the the table. but where does he see the cuts coming from? i think the president would be open to discussing those. but i think it is incumbent upon the speaker to come up with those cuts. >> ali vitali, joe crawley and carlos curbelo, thank you for starting us off. we want to turn to the deadly weather in the south. on this now fourth day of a massive ice storm across multiple states. nearly half a million customers in texas are still without power including heat this morning. these frigid conditions. emergency crews are working around the clock, but one utility company says power may not be restored in some areas

until tomorrow as frozen trees are knocking down power lines. cities from dallas to memphis are still paralyzed with ice blanketing the roads. and air travel is still crippled. today, more than 1400 flights have been canceled, more than 8,000 delayed according to flight aware. in all, the weather has been attributed to at least eight deaths across the region. nbc's guad venagas has more. that area behind you has been an ice rink. how are people faring where you are? >> reporter: lindsey, well, i have a piece of ice here, this is what we find on top of our cars. so, yeah, the temperature has been between 30, 32, 33 degrees. it is right there, right at freezing point, but we have a lot of ice. yesterday we were in downtown memphis area on the tennessee side. all of downtown had streets covered in ice. we came over to the arkansas side today.

and, you know, all morning we have been saying this is a park that you can essentially ice skate through because there is still ice like this covering the area. now, a lot of the roadways and streets had been treated with salt by authorities. so we have seen more traffic as you mentioned, the temperature is a little warmer today. we still have ice everywhere, but it is a little warmer, which could be tricky for some of the drivers, because it only takes one spot, one piece of ice for a vehicle to lose control. and a lot of the people we have spoken to who have gone out on the roads tell us they see other vehicles, almost everyone that has driven yesterday or today will tell you, i saw a car spin out of control, i was spinning out of control. so the conditions remain, we're still under that warning for the ice storm, until later today. but we do expect conditions to improve. and you mentioned the power outages, just yesterday we were talking about the power not being as vulnerable as we

thought it could be. the power grid, especially in texas, it was holding, but then now we heard about the trees that are falling apart, damaging some of the power lines. and this park, you can see behind me, has trees everywhere. all the branches are frozen and as we have been standing here this morning, we heard some of the branches fall. what happens is when they freeze, it is just -- it is so easy for the weight of the ice to just break them and that's what's been happening across the region as we continue under this ice storm warning, lindsey. >> wow. guad, thank you. still to come, things are about to get even more complicated for congressman george santos. what we know about the fbi reportedly probing his role in an alleged go fund me scheme involving a veteran and his dying dog. and the history class controversy intensifying two days into black history month. i'll talk with two leading academics about why an advanced placement african american studies course has become the

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this morning, we're getting new details about one of the

investigations into embattled congressman george santos. richard osof says he's spoken to the fbi about his allegations that santos stole thousands of dollars from an online fund-raising campaign intended to cover life saving surgery for his service dog. he says he thinks the surgery would have saved his dog sapphire's life and he tells nbc news he turned over records including text messages with santos dating back to 2016, turned them over to the fbi. two federal law enforcement sources previously confirmed federal prosecutors in new york are looking into santos' finances. the fbi declined to comment on these new allegations. santos' office is also not responded to a request for comment. joining me now, senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake. how does this dog fund-raiser fit into the federal investigation? >> reporter: it is not really clear what the scope of this federal investigation really is. the biggest blaring red line has been how he funded his campaign.

at one point he loaned himself $700,000 over the course of two transactions to pay for his campaign. he's amended some of his filings, but they only served to make it less clear where that money came from. now, this incident with richard and the dog took place back in 2016. so that's four years before santos ran for congress the first time. so it is not clear if it is exactly connected and as you point out, santos hasn't talked about this publicly. he hasn't answered our questions about it. all we have to go on his side of the story here is this tweet that we're going to put on the screen now in which he calls the reports that he would let a dog die shocking and insane. if you go on to read the rest of the tweet, there is a denial here at all about anything to do with the money that richard says was raised on behalf of his dog. so a lot to explore here. he says he handed over everything he's got to the fbi, they don't comment on

investigations. they are or are not conducting. he's off his committees until he's cleared of any wrongdoing. it is hard to see a scenario in which the fbi comes out anytime soon and says we looked into this dog thing and you're off the hook, george santos. so, just a very bizarre situation. only getting weirder by the day. >> garrett haake, thank you. a search for more classified documents at president biden's delaware beach house came up empty according to an attorney for the president. the fbi spend nearly four hours yesterday morning going through the home for any documents with classified markings. documents with markings were previously found at his home in wilmington, delaware and his washington think tank office. nbc's carol lee joins me from the white house. what does this mean for the investigation? >> reporter: it means that investigators continue to do their own checks of various places where potentially classified documents might be. as you said, they checked the president's office after he left the vice presidency in washington, d.c. his wilmington home, and now his rehoboth beach home. what we're hearing from the

white house and from justice department is that this was an agreed upon search, there was no search warrant and from the white house's perspective, that underscores how the president and his team are cooperating with this investigation as they say they have been from the beginning. outgoing chief of staff ron klain emphasized that last night. take a listen. >> the hallmark of our handling of this has been cooperation with the justice department, with the archives, in the first instance it make them aware, they didn't ask for documents from us, the president and his legal team said we found some documents, we have been cooperating fully, and today was just the latest example of that cooperation. >> reporter: now, lindsey, when we heard from the president's personal lawyer is that the investigators did not find document with classified markings on them at the rehoboth beach house, but they did take other items, specifically handwritten notes that pertain to the president's time serving

as vice president. so, they did find something that was of interest in the scope of their investigation, we know from our own reporting, lindsey, that something the fbi has taken possession of in previous searches are notebooks that president biden kept when he was vice president and the idea there is to examine them for possible references to classified information, and to look at some of the notations on there and see if they are things that should be government property, lindsey. >> carol, i want to ask you about something else. nbc news learned hunter biden is asking authorities to investigate allies of former president trump who he said trafficked in stolen information from his personal laptop. what can you -- can you explain what he wants? >> reporter: so, what hunter biden's lawyers are alleging here is that these individuals including rudy giuliani, former president trump's lawyer, used to be lawyer, that they broke a number of federal and state laws. and so the argument that they're making is that this was information and the retrieval of it, the dissemination of it,

that that was something that broke a number of laws and that these individuals should be held accountable for that. it is worth noting this is a more aggressive posture that we have seen from the president's son until now. he's largely laid low, he's not pushed back on this, this is a recommendation, these are letters to the justice department to delaware's attorney general's office. but this seems to be the beginning of a potentially more aggressive strategy as he comes under investigation potentially by the house oversight committee, all signs point to that, and also just continues to endure attacks from republicans. >> carol lee, thank you. next, after an emotional funeral for tyre nichols, new detail on the investigation into the memphis police department and when we could see an official copy of the police report tied to the traffic stop. plus, why this video of a dog is casting doubt on disbarred south carolina lawyer alex murdaugh's alibi. the latest from his murder trial

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justice is long overdue. that was president biden's message this morning at the national prayer breakfast to the

family of tyre nichols after they celebrated the 29-year-old's life in an emotional service yesterday. during which they issued an urgent call to action on police reform. >> i just need whatever that george floyd bill needed passed. because there should be no other child that should suffer the way my son -- have lost their children. >> nbc news is new obtained a copy, unreleased copy of a memphis police report into the tyre nichols traffic stop and it portrays nichols as violent and states he tried to grab an officer's gun, which we know has been contradicted by multiple videos released by authorities. it makes no mention that officers repeatedly punched and kicked nichols in his head and face. a memphis police spokesperson said that report is unavailable and did not respond to questions about it, but the shelby county

d.a.'s office confirmed it reviewed a copy of the report with the same details and expects it to be officially released within days. joining me right now is nbc news correspondent ellison barber. when could we see the official copy of the report and where does the investigation stand? >> reporter: yeah, you touched on it there in terms of when it could be released. the shelby county district attorney's office is telling us that they expect the memphis police department to release it within days. but the memphis police department is not saying that. all they would tell us is that the incident report from january 7th, the night that tyre nichols was stopped and detained and violently beaten by police officers, that that incident report is not currently available. this report, this unofficial report actually first surfaced on facebook, a local radio host and blogger who lived in memphis for years who goes by the name

the cussing pastor on facebook, he actually first posted a photo of this report. a spokesperson for the shelby county district attorney then told our colleague priscilla thompson that the details in that unofficial can copy matched the account of the official report they had in their possession. and there are just major discrepancies between the unofficial report that we have seen and the video we have seen from that night. i'm going to quote from the unofficial copy of the report, because i think it is important to hear some of the wording that they used and viewers can think back to the video that they have likely already seen a number of times. but this report, it says that tyre nichols refused a lawful detention and, quote, he started to fight with detectives. it says detectives gave verbal commands to stop resisting and then the suspect tyre nichols grabbed for detective martin's gun. none of that happened, based on the video evidence that we have seen. officers yanked him out of the

car at the first intersection and at no point in the video that has been released so far did we see tyre nichols appear to reach for any officer's gun. the report then goes on to say that a chemical agent was deployed and a taser, but nichols pulled the taser probes out and ran away. we do see that happen in the video that has been released from that night. this report, again, it is unofficial, but the d.a. for this county says it matches the descriptions, the accounts they have in their possession. it then goes on to describe the second encounter. and says that when officers were trying to detain nichols, he was actively resisting police by pulling deputy belts, and grabbing one officer by his vest. it says a chemical agent was used again and that one officer used his department issued baton while attempting to get the suspect to comply. it does not mention that officers repeatedly punched and kicked nichols in his head and face. in a video, it is apparent that they repeatedly punched him,

that he was kicked a number of times when he was on the ground, and most of that happening at the second scene in the video that we have. tyre nichols was not resisting in those moments at all. in fact, in the video we have seen particularly from that second scene, he is handcuffed the majority of the time, oftentimes seems lifeless and at one point you have the horrific moment where officers are holding him up as another officer hits him, punches him, hitting the punching, the kicking, none of that is mentioned in this report even once. lindsey? >> ellison barber, thank you. this morning, prosecutors in the double murder trial of disbarred lawyer alex murdaugh are pushing to include testimony about his financial crimes he's accused of committing. the judge hasn't decided whether that testimony will be allowed. this comes after jurors saw a highly anticipated cell phone video, showing it to you now, taken by murdaugh's son paul minute before they were killed.

they say this video contradicts his alibi, putting him at the crime scene at the time of the murders. catie beck is monitoring everything that is happening at the trial. what else do we hear about the cell phone video? >> reporter: well, the interesting part about this cell phone video is that prosecutors say it places alex murdaugh at the crime scene minutes before the murders occur. you can't physically see him in this video, but they had several witnesses take the stand yesterday and clearly identify his voice as one of the three on that tape. just to sort of set up what is seen in that video, paul murdaugh took the video from his phone, of a dog being housed in a kennel, his friend's dog, and it had some type of rash on its tail. paul murdaugh filming the dog to show the friend and you can hear both maggie's voice and then a third voice, that several witnesses say very clearly was alex murdaugh. from the stand, one of his friends yesterday answering a

question about whether or not he watched the video and who he could identify. here is some of that sound. >> i did. >> what voices did you hear? >> paul's, miss maggie, mr. alex. >> how sure are you now? >> positive. >> can you think of any circumstance that you can envision knowing them as you do where alex would brutally murder paul and maggie? >> not that i can think of. >> reporter: they had another witness take the stand shortly after him, another friend of paul murdaugh's said with 100% certainty that the voice on the tape is alex murdaugh. >> catie beck, thank you. next, if a student winds up taking the college board's new advanced placement african american studies course, some key lessons are out of the curriculum after political pressure. >> really hurt. i think we were moving forward in life. >> to two leading academics join me next on race and the

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learn more at getrefunds.com. this morning, the academic group that runs advanced placement classes nationwide is being accused of caving to political pressure and watering down american history. the nonprofit college board revised its ap african american studies course after florida governor ron desantis and other state officials rejected the course over works by several authors and six specific subject areas. the areas include black queer studies, intersectionality, movement for black lives, black feminist literary thought, the reparations movement and black struggle in the 21st century. the college board says the revisions were long planned and based on input from experts, however a number of those areas that were revised or eliminated entirely from the new syllabus or ones specifically called out by florida officials. joining us now to talk about this are two leading academics

in the field of african american studies, eddie guad and michael eric dyson, distinguished university professor of african american and diaspora studies at vanderbilt university and co-author of "unequal: the story of america". eddie, your reaction to the college board making these changes. >> first of all, great to see professor dyson and to read this syllabus, this course. i think it is -- we have to get clear on the timeline. i take an issue with removing the discussion of black lives matter, but, you know, it is an -- it is an iterative process, they're trying to in some ways make sense of the course or to fine tune the course. i think it is really important for us to understand the intersectionality is still there. when you look at section four, unit four, you still see talk about black women's movements in

the 20th century, you have talk -- readings of mari evans, readings of maude and gwendolyn brooks. they're doing it in a different way by using primary source material. i wish we didn't have to talk about this by way of framing the desantis offer. it gets in the way, more than clarifies things. >> michael, some of these areas that were revised or eliminated altogether, what would high school students miss by eliminating what i mentioned? >> well, obviously, it is great to see professor glaude as always, the tragic truth is that we are politicizing what should be essentially an academic enterprise. as professor glaude alluded to, there could be without the intervention of ron desantis and the folks in florida legitimate internal disputes about what to emphasize.

professor glaude's course on african american studies would be different than professor dyson, professor west's, professor gates and so on. there are all kinds of differences. we might emphasize intersectionality one way. somebody a different way. those are legitimate concerns. but when desantis politicizes the whole debate, by an extension of his stop woke act in florida, this is essentially george wallace june 11th, 1963, standing in the doorway to prevent the entree of vivian malone and james hood. without an ap course, they may not get those references. the point is it is not physically the same thing, but it is metaphorically the same thing. it is a governor attempting to -- we should have the freedom to challenge the presuppositions of american democracy in the context of american political life and american academic life.

the whole point of black studies is a political movement that led to an academic reflection upon serious concerns of african american life. we can no more distinguish the politics then from now except in this case the politization has to do with the attempt to corral black knowledge and to limit what we know about who we are as a people in the nation. >> professor glaude if you want to respond to anything he said, you're welcome to. but also how notable is it we're having this conversation so soon after the funeral of another black man killed by police, and officials still don't want students to be taught about the movement for black lives, when we keep seeing this violence against black men and women. >> right. and it is a reflection of the can country's refusal to grow up, the country's refusal to confront who and what it is, the past that had made it what it is. and, remember, we have to make a distinction. this african american studies course is not simply an african american history course.

african american history is a subfield within the context of african american studies. and what the ap course has done, i think, which it has done pretty effectively, it will prepare students who enter my courses as freshmen. they will come in with a baseline body of knowledge. i think unit four has this idea that it is dealing with movements and debates. it makes no sense to me that black lives matter has now been reduced to a project that the students can voluntarily investigate. black lives matter is perhaps the most significant modern movement that we have experienced here. it seems that should be something a little bit more direct. the stuff around black queer theory, they have moved it throughout the syllabus, the course, and they're using primary source material. they could be a little more direct in this regard. like professor dyson said, if we were not dealing with this against the backdrop of stay woke acts, the backdrop of critiques of critical race theory, we could get at the

content of the course. what we're dealing with this is this fear of this displacement that is driving the terror and panic and is being used by people like desantis to motivate fears and grievance and for his own selfish ends. >> professor dyson, a spokesperson for desantis told nbc news that the state education department is looking at the new framework for corrections and compliance with florida law. what do you expect will happen? >> well, i expect next they'll interrogate people teaching quantum mechanics. do they think that those are teaching ap courses and biology have a sufficient knowledge of mitochondria or if we speak about the relationship between sports and culture, are they emphasizing, hey, greenburg at the expense of sandy koufax? the point is we get experts, ostensible, you know, intelligence, directed at a particular area of, you know, ability to make decisions about what is going on. so if we have a governor

standing in place in proxy for the vote of the people, the very point of black studies is to interrogate the ignorance that clouds the possibility of learning about african american or black culture. and as professor glaude said, it is not just history, it is politics, it is culture, it is critical theory, and, you know, they don't know the difference between most of these people, crt and opp. they have no idea between the 90s hip-hop group and the treacherous slippery slope we're on when we try to negotiate politically what should be going on in the classroom. so for me, the governor's words are empty. his spokesperson doesn't deal with the immediate matter. we can not hyperpoliticize the attempt to knowledge. the entire point of black studies it was not being taught. it was refused to be taught. now that those who have accepted

bitterly the necessity of this course should not be in control of determining what it can contain. you don't go to pharaoh to have a course on freedom. what we have to do is to interrogate the practices and the thinking of the culture in which we live as part and parcel of a course on black studies. what is going on here would make an excellent entree into a course thinking about the relationship between politics and the academy. >> professor glaude, final thoughts. >> well, we buried tyre nichols yesterday. and that is a reflection, lindsey, of the ongoing refusal of this country to understand that diversity is constituentive of who and what it is. this course is one example. we're in a moment of betrayal and backlash and desantis is its face. we need to understand that for what it is and not cave to that. not allow it to frame what i

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what does this mean for something like housing, which we know has fallen off a cliff in terms of how depressed it has gotten. mortgage rates are tied to the ten-year treasury yield, which does not move directly in line with the fed's rate setting decision. actually, the ten-year-year-old has come off a bit since its october high. with it, mortgage rates. the ten-year yield is a reflection of market expectations for where the economy is headed. we know that the economy is slowing down right now in large part because of the fed raising interest rates. a typical 30-year fixed mortgage rate is now about 6%. that's off from october. it's still about double where we were a little over a year ago. what that has meant is it weighed on sellers, on buyers who are now facing higher borrowing costs. that has put downward pressure on home prices. at some point home prices are going to come off enough and correct enough that sellers -- or that buyers will look to get back into the market. it's a similar dynamic in terms

of the higher borrowing costs across the board. there is this expectation tied to the ten-year-year-old that we see costs come off a little bit, though not the low levels we saw during the pandemic. >> thank you. break my soul may be beyonce's latest song. can she break ticketmaster? obviously, they were overwhelmed. they blamed the bots. >> it's taking a different approach, choosing a more stagger rollout. we will see unsurprisingly very high demand. think about it. beyonce hasn't been on a global solo tour in seven years. this has been very much a moment that fans have been ready for. the question now is, is ticketmaster ready?

>> reporter: that girl known as queen bee is back and ready to hit the road. beyonce gearing up for a world tour for renaissance, her seventh album to hit number one on the charts and propel the superstar to the front of the grammy nominees, where she's up for record, album and song of the year. ♪♪ >> reporter: fans hoping they won't have their souls broken ahead of tickets going on asale. >> the renaissance tour is happening. >> reporter: it will be ticketmaster's most high profile test since the botched rollout of taylor swift's tour. >> i didn't get tickets. >> reporter: the bad blood among the swifties, many not ready to shake it off after issues led them to not getting tickets. some beyonce fans worried about deja vu. >> it's going to be like taylor swift 2.0.

>> ticketmaster, you better figure it out. i don't know who you need to call. figure it out. >> reporter: the fallout from the swift tour, which ticketmaster blamed on cyberattacks, leading to a congressional hearing over ticketmaster and live nation's vast control of the concert market share. >> live nation doesn't just dominate the ticketing. it's about 70% of the big concert market. but also, they own many of the major venues. for the venues that they don't own, they tend to lock in on three, five, seven-year agreements. >> reporter: ticket did the -- ticketmaster saying demand will be high. many hoping for a sweet dream over a beautiful nightmare. >> how many puns? >> a good amount. a handful. >> talk to me about you are going to try? >> i'm going to try. emphasis on try. there's no guarantee.

if you are in new york, that's group a. the deadline is tonight. >> i gotta interrupt. do we get to -- do we have to have to be counted as americans? this is what this debate is about, madam speaker. there's this idea that you are a suspect if you are an immigrant or if you are from certain parts of the world or a certain skin tone or a muslim. it is no accident that members of the republican party accused the first black president, barack obama, of being a secret muslim. it's no accident that former president donald trump let a birther movement that falsely claimed he was born in kenya. to them, falsely labeling the first and only president

president being named an african immigrant made him less american. well, i am muslim. i am an immigrant. interestingly, from africa. is anyone surprised that i am being targeted? is anyone surprised that i am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about american foreign policy? or that they see me as a powerful voice that needs to be silenced. frankly, it is expected. because when you push power, power pushes back. representation matters. continuing to expand our ideas of who is american and who can partake in the american experience -- experiment, is a good thing. i am an american. an american who was sent here --

[ applause ] an american who was sent here by her constituents to represent them in congress. a refugee who survived the horrors of a civil war. someone who spent her childhood in a refugee camp. someone who knows what it means to have a shot at a better life here in the united states. and someone who believes in the american dream and the american possibility and the promise and the ability to participate in the democratic process. that is what this debate is about. there is an idea out there that i am not -- that i do not have objective decision making because of who i am, where i come from and my perspective. but i reject that. we say there is nothing objective about policy making. we all inject our perspective, our point of views, our lived

experiences and the voices of our constituents. that's what democracy is about. what is the work of the foreign affairs committee? it is not to cosign the stated foreign policy of whatever administration is in power. it's about oversight. it's to critique and to advocate for a better path forward. but most importantly, it is to make the myth that american foreign policy is intrinsically moral a reality. so i will continue to speak up, because representation matters. i will continue to speak up for little kids who wonder who is speaking up for them. i will continue to speak up for families around the world who are seeking justice. whether they are displaced in refugee camps or they are hiding under their beds somewhere like i was, waiting for the bullets

to stop. because this child survivor of war would have wanted that. the 9-year-old me would be disappointed if i didn't talk about the victims of conflict. those that are experiencing unjust wars, atrocities, ethnic cleansing, occupation or displacement like i did. they are looking to the international community and the united states asking for help. they look to us because the international community and the united states profess the values of protecting human rights and upholding international law. so we owe it to them not to make this a myth but a reality. i didn't come to congress to be silent. i came to congress to be their voice. my leadership and voice will not be diminished if i a